New technology has made the modern car fuel efficent....new diesels powerplants get 60 miles a gallon average.
Perhaps thats why the Chrysler-FIAT integration has some merit.
The battery laptop hybrid is not the only answer until it is perfected.
Thats why the Germans have been reluctant to put them into mass production.
The answer is Hydrogen but we all know that the transport and availability of this gas poses a problem of settingup a network.
America must be weaned of their SUV V6 dinosaurs....as Gerry Brown said Small is Beautiful.

viejonico wrote:May 19, 2009 21:37
GM and Chrysler would not be againts th ropes today had they undestood a decade ago than going green is the only way ahead.

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The problem has never been with GM and Chrysler but with people and politicians these people elect. When oil is cheap nobody wants to buy fuel efficient cars. The sells of hybrids have all but collapsed just a few months after oil went back to $50 per barrel. GM by the way is heavily invested in hybrids and electric cars and was lobbying the government hard for gas tax to save its investments.

Fuel efficiency standards by the way will not save GM and its investment. Because unlike gas tax, they create no incentive for owners of the already existing cars to drop them. Many people will simply buy used SUVs or stay with their current cars, while sells of new cars have collapsed because of recession and destruction of internal demand. It should come as no surprise if fuel efficiency standards end with destruction of what's left of the US car manufacturing.

The beneficial side effects will be less fuel imported, better jobs (more challenging) and cleaner air. The alternative is that we use the same technology today that we will be using a decade from now. Would anyone still want to be driving cars built using 1970s technology?

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Hybrids and flex engines are expensive hi-tech cars. The enthusiasm for fuel efficiency standards comes from ignorance about how much these can really cost. It's the same with the cap and trade vs gas tax thing. Americans in general are great believers in free lunches. So fuel efficiency standards and cap and trade are more popular because they create an illusion that while Americans are making the world a better place, somebody else is paying the expenses. The reality is very different.

"A increase in fuel efficiency will increase total miles driven and thus increase the emissions."

I'm not too sure how that works. To my musings, most driving is done in the context of work rather than pleasure. Just because fuel efficiency goes up doesn't mean that people will want to commute to longer distances (personally, I've had enough by the time I've been driving for an hour).

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It affects suburban sprawl and such stuff. The low gas price accounts for the way Americans use territory presently and increasing fuel efficiency standards makes little to change this nationwide tendency to sprwal.

I don't really see why they need tougher emission laws. By raising the fuel tax rate, you achieve the same thing without all this stupid bureaucracy. People will want to buy more frugal cars if the petrol price increases.

If you refer to the statistics compiled by J. D. Power & Associates, you will find your comment on quality is about 20 years out of date (unless iff you are referring to Chrysler) both as to IQ (initial quality) and durability.

Yet, I would say the Americans shouldn't abandon the fuel tax road. The US gas price has been such an anomaly compared to Europe/Japan, and this difference largely accounts for the difference in their cars today. It may possibly make big differences in many other areas in the future.

This was long overdue. American car companies should jump on this. By meeting these standards sooner rather than later and cheaper than the competition they can chart their way back to success. Oh, they also need to boost quality too.

These standards are rather on the low side. Anybody doing some research will see that the small European Diesel cars from the 80s, like the Rabbit, already complied with the 2016 norms. Adding gadgets and power created the current need for hybrids to comply to the same standard.

Meanwhile, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Mercedes, have their electrical cars lined up. Doubling fuel efficiency, and zero pollution (or only half in the power plant). In one or two years batteries will have doubled in capacity, and halved in price. The main limiting factor on electric cars is the initial investment, as well in the car, as in the distribution system (which is safer and cleaner than a fuel based distribution).

As harsh as these new emissions reforms may sound, I personally believe that they may be fructiferous in the long run. They will serve as a catalyzer for a more efficient industry, making companies more socially involved with the community and the environment. It's an aggregated motivation for the creation of new 'nature friendly' technology. Simply taxing will add bureaucratic paperwork, and will most likely not reduce emissions as much as we need for a sustainable world. It's an adequate solution, tough it may impact severely some sectors in the short run(i.e. higher cost of life). This kind of regulations are necessary, and are a good start for changing the existing 'don't care about environment' mentality.

Let's go back to economics 101 and the Solow growth model. Technological changes account for most of the economic growth associated with the past 100 years. Changing fuel consumption standards will require some innovative changes to the design of engines, transmissions and many other major components of the car. Many of those companies designing such components are in North America.

The beneficial side effects will be less fuel imported, better jobs (more challenging) and cleaner air. The alternative is that we use the same technology today that we will be using a decade from now. Would anyone still want to be driving cars built using 1970s technology?

Personally, I find this quite the double edged sword. On the one hand, it will American force car manufacturers to improve fuel economy. On the other hand, given the long standing philosophy of bigger + inefficient = better, these companies will have a fair distance to catch up to international (i.e. European & Japanese heavyhitters) manufacturers. VW is around the 74mpg mark on its smallest models(read: bluemotion) and toyota is around the 60mpg mark on its smallest model. So in effect, Obama might end up sabotaging indigenous manufacturers.

However, the converse, ergo. increasing fuel taxes would almost certainly raise fierce opposition, so looks like Obama didn't really have much of a choice. I think that perhaps the underlying American mentality needs to shift for any real change to take place.

Thomas Payne:

"A increase in fuel efficiency will increase total miles driven and thus increase the emissions."

I'm not too sure how that works. To my musings, most driving is done in the context of work rather than pleasure. Just because fuel efficiency goes up doesn't mean that people will want to commute to longer distances (personally, I've had enough by the time I've been driving for an hour).

ca1ic0cat:

"No matter what technologies are available moving more weight requires more energy. There is no way around the physics."

I would argue this is true not just for the car but also load (i.e. the passengers). Ofcourse the weight of the passengers will normally be insignificant compared to the weight of the car, but the point is, if the passengers were slimmer, perhaps they wouldn't have as much trouble with the cabin space of a smaller car.

caribis wrote:May 19, 2009 21:30
The government is trying to regulate what it should simply tax. A high tax on gasoline and diesel will drive consumer behavior far more effectively than the CAFE standards

The government is trying to regulate what it should simply tax. A high tax on gasoline and diesel will drive consumer behavior far more effectively than the CAFE standards. A gasoline and diesel tax will generate revenue to repair and replace aging transportation infrastructure while simultaneously reducing its use or at least restraining any increase in use. The diesel tax would shift long haul truck loads towards the railroads and river barges, a far more efficient use of energy. Farmers and construction companies already use tax-free diesel, the same thing could be done for local delivery companies. At the same time it will spur development of alternative liquid transportation fuels. And of course there is no way to cheat. Raise the tax enough and people will demand fuel efficient cars. There will be no incentive to game the system by the car makers. They want to make cars and trucks people want to buy. They don't always do the best job of it, but that is what business is. If the real goal is to drive adoption of a transportation system that does not use petroleum based fuel, then a gasoline and diesel tax is the answer.

Now lets look at reality. The Smart fortwo microcar, for all practical purposes a two person enclosed bicycle, has a combined mpg of 37 (41 hwy, 33 city) - two miles per gallon better than the new 2016 standard. So how will the family sedan with all of its electronics, comfy seats, large size, etc... manage to get 37 mpg in combined driving without some sort of hybrid drive? And how do you manufacture hybrid transmissions, batteries, regenerative brakes, etc... in quantities of tens of millions in only six years? Hybrids have been commercially available for about ten years and global production capacity is barely more than a million. Luckily the answers to these questions come at the end of an Obama two-term Presidency.

Speaking of mpg, shouldn't it be mpg per person. If you need to get four people somewhere using Smart cars you need two of them so your mpg per person drops to 18.5. The same exact mpg per person you can get by putting four people in a Jeep Wrangler. Then of course you have the issue of how you drive your car. The guys at Top Gear drove a Prius so hard it returned 17 mpg. You can make small cars with great mpg ratings, but if the consumer drives them hard there go all your fuel savings.

So what will the car manufacturers do? First they will try and relabel everything a truck. Sure it may look like a car, but if it is built on a truck platform they only need to get 30 mpg on fleet average. Second they will make plug-in hybrids that can run on battery for a good while AND get up to highway speeds on said batteries (current plug-in specs only have them going up to about 37 mph on batteries alone). These cars will be specifically designed to get unlimited fuel economy (if you never use gas, just that initial battery charge what is your mpg?) That way when you average out the fleet - you wind up at 35 mpg. You see one car that gets infinity mpg, plus 15 million that average 27.5 mpg, divided by 15,000,001 is still infinity mpg. That is well above the new mandated minimums.

One that states that car manufacturers are not allowed to circumvent the law in bad faith. How about this way, for example:

Build about 300,000 cars per year with some 50-60 mpg on the cheap. Then, buy 200,000 back to trash them. (Wouldn't be the first time.)

$10 a gallon for gas would do a much better job of reducing gas usage though and be much much less of a menace for both car manufacturers and the government. Yes, higher taxes = smaller government. But I don't think that the brainwashed American public would accept this.

P.S.: Brainwashed is just a description of reality, no offense implied.

No matter what technologies are available moving more weight requires more energy. There is no way around the physics. The net result is that the easiest way to trim consumption is to reduce weight. Consider that the Geo Metro got 52mpg but didn't weigh anything close to it's replacement, the Toyota Yaris, which gets 38mpg highway.

Engineering aside the idea of reducing oil consumption is good for the environment and internationl politics. The sooner we are no longer dependent on the noxious regimes that control the oil the better. This task may prove to be the 2010 version of the Apollo program but it should be seen as a national goal to reduce oil usage. In the meantime I suggest people start looking at motorcycles and scooters, a good short term solution.